Zcoin (XZC) is a decentralised, open-source cryptocurrency launched in September 2016 as a fork of Bitcoin. With a strong focus on privacy and anonymity of transactions, Zcoin uses the Zerocoin protocol and a concept called "zero-knowledge cryptographic proof" which obfuscates both the sender's and the recipient's transaction data. In effect, the protocol is capable of proving the ownership of a coin without having to reveal which exact coin one owns. Being a proof-of-work cryptocurrency, Zcoin follows the same mining scheme and halving cycle as Bitcoin, eventually generating 21 million coins; however, it uses a different hashing algorithm (Lyra2). 10% of the total Zcoin supply will be distributed to the founders reward fund. Original announcement.

DistroWatch.com - BitKey

BitKey is a FREE, Debian-based live Linux distribution designed for Bitcoin users; it comes with specialist utilities to perform highly secure air-gapped Bitcoin transactions. It contains a swiss army knife of handy Bitcoin tools that support a wide range of usage models, including a few very secure ones which would otherwise be difficult to perform. The system boots into one of the three available modes: "cold-offline" - for creating a wallet and signing transactions; "cold-online" - for watching the wallet and preparing transactions; "hot-online" - standard usage but less secure as the private keys are known to the computer which is connected to the internet.

A hashing algorithm (also known as "hash function") is an algorithm that can be used to map digital data of arbitrary size to digital data of fixed size, with slight differences in input data producing very big differences in output data. The values returned by a hash function are called hash values, hash codes, hash sums, or simply hashes. A cryptographic hash function allows one to easily verify that some input data matches a stored hash value, but makes it hard to reconstruct the data from the hash alone. Bitcoin uses SHA-256 (one of the SHA-2 set of cryptographic hash functions) as its hashing algorithm. However, newer cryptocurrencies tend prefer "scrypt" as their hashing algorithm to counter the rise of specialist SHA-2 accelerator chips known as ASIC.

Holger Schinzel has released a bug-fix update of the Dash (DASH) Core wallet client, the application powering the project's proof-of-stake cryptocurrency with extra privacy and anonymity features: "We are happy to announce the release of Dash Core 0.12.2.3. Dash Core 0.12.2.3 is a maintenance release of the Dash Core 0.12.2.x series. In this minor release only bug fixes have been included and we consider this a stable release. This release includes fixes and improvements as follows: InstantSend fixes; fix -liquidityprovider option; fixes a few crashes and compatibility issues." The release notes provide details on the above-mentioned changes, including the InstantSend fix: "Coin selection could work slightly incorrect in some edge cases which could lead to a creation of an InstantSend transaction which only the local wallet would consider to be a good candidate for a lock. Such txes was not locked by the network but they were creating a confusion on the user side giving an impression of a slightly higher InstantSend failure rate." Download (SHA256): dashcore-0.12.2.3-linux64.tar.gz (26.4MB, signature), dashcore-0.12.2.3-linux32.tar.gz (27.0MB, signature), dashcore-0.12.2.3-RPi2.tar.gz (11.1MB, signature), dashcore-0.12.2.3-osx.dmg (13.7MB, signature), dashcore-0.12.2.3-win64-setup.exe (14.8MB, signature), dashcore-0.12.2.3-win64.zip (26.5MB, signature). Here is the quick link to the source code: v0.12.2.3.tar.gz (6.92MB).

Dash (DASH) is a decentralised, open-source, digital cryptocurrency project forked from Litecoin in January 2014. Compared to Litecoin, Dash offers stronger transaction privacy and anonymity, while its software is more resistant to mining with specialist hardware. Better privacy is achieved through a technology called Darksend, a coin-mixing service that combines identical inputs from multiple users into a single transaction with several outputs which obfuscates the flow of funds. Dash has also developed and implemented a hashing algorithm called X11 which uses a sequence of 11 rounds of hashing for its proof-of-work consensus mechanism. To adjust mining difficulty over time, Dash uses an algorithm called Dark Gravity Wave, also developed in-house. The cryptocurrency project was formerly known as Darkcoin (DRK), but it was rebranded to Dash in March 2014. Original announcement.

Evan Duffield has announced the release of Dash (DASH) Core 0.12.1.0, a major new release from the privacy-oriented cryptocurrency launched in January 2014 as Darkcoin (rebranding to Dash about a year later). This version of Dash is based on Bitcoin 0.12.1: "It is with great excitement that the development team has just released our much anticipated version 12.1 of the Dash Core client. This release is our most extensive release to date, after which the development team will be able to focus fully on Evolution. Once again, Dash is delivering first-in-cryptocurrency functionality that further differentiates us in the market, and enables an entirely new model for supporting the Dash ecosystem in exciting new ways. Here is an abbreviated list of the enhanced functionality included in the version 12.1 release: based on Bitcoin 0.12.1 with RBF off; PrivateSend multi-session mixing to speed mixing times...." Read the release announcement for more information, changelog and upgrade instructions. Download links: dashcore-0.12.1.0-linux64.tar.gz (26.7MB, SHA256, signature), dashcore-0.12.1.0-RPi2.tar.gz (11.0MB, SHA256, signature), dashcore-0.12.1.0-osx.dmg (13.9MB, SHA256, signature), dashcore-0.12.1.0-win64-setup.exe (15.1MB, SHA256, signature), dashcore-0.12.1.0-win64.zip (26.8MB, SHA256, signature). The source code is available from GitHub: v0.12.1.0.tar.gz (7.24MB).